Wildlife in Yellowstone and Teton National Parks

Black bear in Grand Tetons
Yellow-bellied Marmot
Grizzly near Yellowstone Canyon
Black bear near Roosevelt YNP
Baby elk in Yellowstone
Buffalo in Yellowstone

AJ's friend, Chipmunk

While we were in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks, we saw a variety of wildlife. Most prevalent were the buffalo which could appear at any time anywhere in the park. You could always tell visitors who were new to the park because they would stop in the middle of the road to look at the buffalo...though sometimes you would have to because they were in the middle of the road! The buffalo are the largest animals in the park. Adult bulls can be more than 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh more than a ton. They can run faster than humans and should be admired from a distance!
We also saw elk, the most abundant large animal in the park, usually near the ranger stations. They are about the size of an average horse and feeds on plants in many parts of the park. We saw mostly females with their young.
Bears are a huge attraction at the park. Grizzlies are found near open meadows and can run fast enough to catch an elk. There are about 150 grizzlies in YNP and a full-grown male can weigh 2 to 3 times as much as a black bear. We saw a grizzly at the end of our Lupine Walk. Many black bears roam YNP and can be seen in near forests looking for rodents and insects to eat. We saw a mother bear with twin cubs near the Roosevelt area in YNP and a lone bear on the hillside in GTNP. The bears can be identified by the shoulder hump and a rump lower than the shoulder in a grizzly and no shoulder hump and a rump higher than the shoulder in a black. Color is not a good way to tell them apart because both kinds can be golden, dark brown, black, reddish, and in combinations.
In all, there are about 67 species of mammals; 148 species of nesting birds; 11 native species of fish and 5 non-native; 6 species of amphibians; and 4 species of reptiles.